Yet it’s hard to read Sylvia’s piece without thinking about the intellectual regression we’ve suffered. Here’s how she puts it:

By the Panic of 1907, Fisher had concluded that most extreme fluctuations in economic activity resulted from monetary disturbances. He had identified too much money as the source of inflationary booms, too little as the source of deflationary depressions.

By tracing seemingly unrelated economic pathologies to a single variable, money, he had identified a potential cure: Stabilize the value of money — that is, avoid inflation or deflation — and so stabilize economic activity. This was a cure that government, which issues money and determines its value, could dispense.

But think about the state of debate in America right now, with leading Republicans denouncing “fiat money”, and distinguished economists insisting that a slump that is obviously, obviously, a case of Fisherian debt deflation is instead the product of market fear of the socialist tendencies of a very centrist president.